CSE Undergraduate Studies Committee
Minutes of Meetings (2013-'14)

Spring:	Feb. 14;
Fall:	Nov. 25;

02/14/'14

1. GPA requirement for admission to the major: As noted in the minutes of the Nov. 25 meeting, the demand for entry to the CIS and CSE majors continues to be extremely high. In Sp '14, the one-year total of admits to the major was an incredibly high 368. Currently, the GPA is slated to increase to 3.0 in Summer '14. If that requirement had been in place for the one year preceding Sp '14, based on the standard GPA distribution curve, the number of admits would have been around 220. Instead, 368 students were admitted and we will have to meet their course needs for the next two to three years. Moreover, the new Data Analytics major has been approved and it is expected to generate as many as 50 students in the first year and, possibly, going up to 200 per year within three or four years. Eric made some projections, based on the data we have. (The 250 per year is the figure that Xiaodong suggested would be appropriate, in the steady state, given our current tenure-track faculty size. The 220 per year is obtained from that by subtracting 30 to account for load from 50 Data Analytics majors per year, treating each DA major as 0.4, as far as the load on CSE courses is concerned, of a CSE/CIS major.)

   After extended discussion (over two sessions!), we agreed on the following:

   • As currently scheduled, the GPA requirement for admission to the CIS/CSE majors will go up to 3.0 in Su 2014.
   • We will recommend, to the faculty for its approval, the following change starting Su 2015:
     • The GPA requirement for admission to the CIS and CSE majors will be raised to 3.2.
     • Students who, after completing all requirements for admission to the major, including CSE 2221, have a GPA of between 3.0 and 3.199... will not be admitted to the major but will have the following option: they will be allowed, in the same manner as students admitted to the major, to enroll in CSE 2231 and 2321. If, after completion of CSE 2221, 2231, and 2321, their overall GPA is 3.0 or above and their MPHR (i.e., their grade point average in CSE courses that count toward the major, not including pre-major courses) is 3.2 or above, they will be eligible for admission to the major.
     • The above policy will be reexamined in future years.
2. Annual forum: The annual forum will be scheduled for either the week of March 17 or March 24, the most likely date being March 25. A decision will be made soon, based on availability of various people. (March 25 has been confirmed; time: 5:30 pm; place: DL 357.)
3. POCAT: There was no time to discuss the results from Au '13. Moreover, the POCATs for this semester are already in progress. So we decided we will have a combined discussion of all the results after the completion of the current POCATs.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:00 pm.

Next meeting: ??

Nov. 25, 2013

1. Enrollment in the CSE and CIS majors: The demand for entry to the CIS and CSE majors continues to be extremely high. In the 12-month period ending in Summer 2013, a combined total, across CIS and CSE, of 319 students were admitted to the majors. Our target figure, given our faculty resources, is around 230. Almost all of our classes are completely full, with many having been converted into "large" sizes (70+ students); from a pedagogical point of view, this is highly undesirable. But even with such measures, many students, mostly non-majors, have been closed out of classes.

   The current CPHR (cumulative point hour ratio) for admission to the majors is 2.5 (over a minimum of 15 cr hours at OSU); until January '13, it was 2.0. Thus the figure of 319 admits is over a period when the requirement was 2.0 for about the half the time and 2.5 for the other half. The requirement is slated to increase to 3.0 effective Summer '14.

   We will revisit this early next semester, when we will have additional data from Autumn '13, to see if a further increase in the CPHR requirement is called for. If such an increase is approved, it will go into effect in Summer of 2015. It was also noted that an increase in the tenure-track faculty size has little impact on our ability to offer undergraduate classes, especially in the short term; instead, it is the full-time lecturers, especially senior lecturers, who are teaching a major portion of our undergraduate classes.

2. Semester transition: Due to considerable effort on the part of the Advising Office, the transition to semesters seems to have gone off fairly smoothly for most students. In many cases, the office has had to work one-on-one with students to come up with individualized transitions. All of the effort seems to have paid off and students seem generally satisfied with the transition. We expect (hope!) that things will be somewhat easier from here onward.

   There were no specific comments about CSE courses under semesters; the transition of most courses seem to have been smooth. But there were serious concerns about the new ECE courses, ECE 2000 and 2100. The first two-thirds of ECE 2000 concerns digital logic and that portion of the course seems to work well. The last third of ECE 2000 and the first half of ECE 2100 deal with signal processing. The second half of ECE 2100 concerns analog circuits and that seems to work reasonably as well. It is the last third of ECE 2000 and the first half of 2100, the portions dealing with signal processing, that are very problematic. The lectures seem to present the material as essentially exercises in applied calculus with almost no physical explanation or insight; and the GTAs are of almost no help. The "labs" don't help either since they seem to be organized mostly as mechanical activities ("push this button", "watch that video") and don't help students develop conceptual understanding of the topic.

   One possible reason for this problem is that the same courses are used for both ECE and CSE students; while the material, as it is taught, may make sense to ECE students (or it may provide them background which will be built on later in their curricula), an alternative approach might be much preferable for CSE students. One possiblity might be to come up with a version of the sequence meant for CSE students that omits the signal processing component while expanding the digital logic and/or analog circuit portions.

   We will work with the ECE faculty to see if we can address this problem.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:40.

Next meeting: ??